The History and the Life of Chinggis Khan: (The Secret History of the Mongols). Translated and Annotated

The History was written in the 13th Century. It deals briefly with the ancestors and successor (Ogodei, reign 1228-1241) of Chinggis Khan and in more detail with the life of Chinggis Khan, who was founder of the Mongol Empire. The empire during Khubilai Khan's reign was expanded from Mongolia and China to the western edge of Russia. It was the most extensive empire ever established on horseback (about 700 years later, the British empire was built on ships). The History has been translated into many foreign Hungarian, Turkish, Polish, Chinese, Russian, French, German, Japanese and English, but the integral text has never before been translated by a native Mongol scholar, using mainly the Mongolian sources to explicate the meaning of previous unknown words in it. As the translator and annotator says in his introduction, the History is the winners' history. The losers' version might well have been different. Chinggis Khan with his 129,000 Mongol cavalrymen never lost a battle. He was the best strategist the world has ever produced. In his article "Chingis Khan and the Mongol Conquest", the late Professor Owen Lattimore said "As a military genius, able to take over new techniques and improve them, Chingis stands above Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Atilla and Napoleon" (See Scientific American, August 1963, p. 66).